December 1998 Seven Generations On The Religious Response to the Environmental Crisis

It’s been over 30 years since the historian Lynn White, Jr. wrote an article placing blame for the environmental crisis at the feet of Western religions, particularly Christianity. Their strong anthro-pocentrism, argued White, places the natural world at the service of humanity, while the visions of a better life after death make what we do to this planet in this life less important. White’s critique galvanized theologians to reconsider how their religions thought about the natural world and has stimulated a substantial body of writing and thought—as well as official church positions—on a number of different environmental issues. On October 20th and 21st this year, theologians, intellectuals, politicians, and scientists from around the world and from different world religions gathered in New York City to examine what part religions can play in addressing the environmental crisis and how religion and science can work together to help us save the planet [see Tucker]. Satya was there to record the proceedings.

It was, of course, a matter of definition. For Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Haudenosaunee people, the question of religion is a complex one since his people have no word for “religion.” “What we say is, ‘the way we live,’” Lyons said. Speaking on behalf of indigenous traditions, Lyons recalled the connection his people have with the Earth and his bond with all other members of his own clan, the wolf. He has friends in different nations all over the continent, he said, all of whom have a wolf clan. These are all relatives, and so are his four-footed brothers. For Seyyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic thought at George Washington University, it was the word “resource” that required definition. There is no such word in Arabic, Persian, or any other language of Islam. Instead, said Nasr, the apt word would be “source”—a word that illustrates how Islam links all of nature to the divine. “To use nature as solely a resource for physical needs is to debase what nature is,” said Nasr. The Koranic revelation, he continued, applies to the entirety of creation, not just human beings, and Islamic law sets severe limits on the use of nature. Nasr called for an end to the endless call for human rights: “Let’s have some human responsibilities,” he said.

All participants argued that, at heart, their religious traditions are grounded in a respect for the natural world. Tu Weiming, Confucian scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, questioned the Enlightenment mentality that places humans outside nature. Confucianism, he said, is based on relationships: between members of a family, within a community, and between the human heart and mind and the Way of Heaven. The human being is important, he said. According to the Confucian ideal, human beings should be direct participants in, and almost co-creators of, nature. Echoing Professor Nasr, he said that the natural world is a source, “a habitat, a home we can return to.” This view, he continued, is not “a romantic assertion,” but “a realistic understanding that a person is always a center of relationships rather than an isolated being.”

The sense of the relational is key in the Jain and Hindu traditions, argued L. M. Singhvi, an Indian member of parliament. It is central to the Jain tradition, whose first postulate is non-violence (ahimsa). And violence is not simply contained in direct physical action. “Waste is violence,” he said. It is interesting, he went on, that both Hinduism and Jainism reach a similar ideal of responsibility and accountability toward the natural world despite containing two different philosophies of origin. Unlike Hinduism, Jainism does not accept a first cause, or a universal consciousness. Both, however, express a conclusion of mutual interdependence and cosmic harmony. For the Jains, this is expressed in the term ahimsa. For the Hindus it is manifest in the term rta. Dharma, literally translated as “that which sustains” is, said Professor Singhvi, the nearest either Jainism or Hinduism gets to the meaning of “religion.” Neither Hinduism nor Jainism has a concept of the conquest or domination of nature. Nor do they have a sense of stewardship. The relationship is more primal than that, the same as one between mother and child.

Sallie McFague, a professor of Christianity at Vanderbilt University, had to confess a little embarrassment: “Sometimes I wish I were not a Christian,” she said. “When I hear indigenous traditions, and Jainism, Taoism, Confucianism, I realize there is more of an intrinsic relationship between the sacred and the natural than what we have seen in the Christian tradition.” Yet, while she acknowledged that the Western traditions have been more dominating of the natural world, McFague doesn’t think it is appropriate either to apologize for or justify one’s religion, but to listen to and absorb the lessons of others. She reflected that she had once been asked whether any Christian group has called the desecration of the natural world a major sin. While she said she couldn’t think of one, she wanted to point out that there is one body that does think it is wrong: God. McFague cited God’s recognition that his [sic] creation is “good” in the first chapter of Genesis.

McFague argued that we need to have a different understanding of ourselves as Americans. We need to move away from the image of an individual possessing complete freedom to consume as much as he or she liked. She acknowledged that the concept of liberty and freedom has freed many from the oppressions of church and state, and that it is vital to honor the preciousness of the individual. But, she continued, by marrying the individualistic mindset with the market model, we have forgotten our radical independence. She asked people to remember that the words “ecology,” “economy” and “ecumenical” come from the same root word meaning “home.” “We need some new house rules,” she said.

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